


True Weavings

by lnhammer



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Metamorphoses - Ovid
Genre: Blank Verse, Divine Inspiration, Gen, Jealousy, Modern Retelling, Poetry, Revenge, Weaving, narrative poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28714842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lnhammer/pseuds/lnhammer
Summary: It isn’t every day you meet your fearembodied only as a god can be.Or, why it’s dangerous to downplay divine inspiration.
Relationships: Arachne & Athena (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Kudos: 3





	True Weavings

With that they sat down at their looms and started,  
the goddess bright with pride, her fingers quick.  
The girl tried once to swallow, but refused  
to let hand tremble as she passed her thread  
from warp to warp, beginning her border vine.

But twining as a frame to what? Whatever  
could she weave? Nothing came to mind as now  
she wrung her dried-out sackcloth brain and, here,  
no time to plan, for soon the edge was done  
and all her yarns laid out. And so she took  
the only thought at hand—that sketch beside  
her loom, roughed out last night but set aside,  
of Leda laughing at a love-struck swan  
next to Europa leading the bull by the nose.  
A silly thing, but what else could she do?  
Without an outward pause, Arachne wove.

The worst was knowing that today her muse  
would utterly refuse to come to her,  
this time not just because she’s blocked—the spring  
of all her art was here, and fighting her.  
Athena’s shuttle flew from side to side,  
clicking like a deathwatch in a corner.

It isn’t every day you meet your fear  
embodied only as a god can be.  
This was her patron—she who breathed through her  
as pictures wove themselves. Each time she lay  
her hand to yarn, she feared her soul’s possession,  
yet dreaded the white-hot flood wouldn’t come—  
and so she always denied the inspiration,  
claiming her tapestries were just her skill,  
mere craft-work, just in case it might turn true.  
But people talk, especially when the work  
is art, till rumor’s net snared her in challenge—  
now goddess, with the rage of goddess spurned  
by mortal, sat here weaving her fate. Just now,  
Athena was working on Medusa’s beauty  
wracked for boastful pride to horridness.  
Arachne didn’t look at that again.

But now her first two scenes were nearly done  
and time to start the next, the same in tone—  
perhaps Alcmena slipping from her bed  
and husband’s snore to tryst with Zeus?  
And Danae thinking gold’s a girl’s best friend.  
Relying on that craft she’d learned to catch  
what inspiration brought, she picked them out  
despite the fist of lead caught in her gut,  
not rushing even when Athena, done,  
watched with glowers and her hands on knees  
for young Arachne to get on with it.

The day was moments stitched together by  
the pluck of rough yarn on her finger tips,  
then suddenly her last end was tied off  
and she sat up. While stretching out stiff arms  
she studied what she’d made, concluded it  
the best that she could do, and only then  
turned to Athena’s weaving to compare.  
Relief unraveled knots that bound her shoulders.  
Her own scenes of seductions of the gods  
were more alive with fluent characters  
than the gods’ official glories wreathed  
by static moral tales. Arachne saw  
her mortal error, blinked, and slowly smiled.

Then sudden divine rage, and then the change.  
Contracting to a belly caged by legs  
that lives on shadowed tatters of true weavings,  
her last thought as a mortal was that she  
had woven better than the goddess when  
they each worked on their own.


End file.
